Yes they are here and we better get used to it! THE VEGANS ARE COMING!!! And ready to tear you down and preach the no meat word of gospel! Put down the fried chicken and pork chops because animals have rights too!! Stop eating that slave food and start eating sensibly! Processed foods are the DEVIL!!!

Bit much? I’m kidding…

Nothing wrong with veganism. In fact, I actually admire them and raw foodists because there’s such much that they give up in order to live a healthier lifestyle with all of this temptation around them. They actually helped bring to the forefront food advocacy, corporate practices, and food safety. Many of them on the outside seem like pot smoking, patchouli smelling, dirty f*cking hippies who are activists, food, political, or otherwise, oh, and are white liberals. Ok, I know that there are plenty of black vegans such as the author of Vegan Soul. It’s not so rare anymore that one would find those. They seem to be just popping up everywhere these days with their cookbooks and their body care products and their blogs and vegan information sites. And I do find vegan food, well most of it anyway, to be not only nutritious and fulfilling, but very delicious, and not bland and flavorless like most people would think.

What’s a vegan? Who would want to give up the big piece of chicken? Veganism is more than just not eating meat. It is a lifestyle. The term came from Donald Watson of the UK who founded the British Vegan Society in 1944 and by H. Jay Hinshah in 1960 who founded the American Vegan Society. They avoid meat, fish, shellfish, eggs, milk, cheese, pretty much anything that had a pulse. There are a variety of reasons why people go meatless, one of them being caging and sanitary conditions of how the animals are kept. Free range – hormone free chicken simply means that the chickens are not caged up so close together and are able to roam free. They are not injected with a bunch of hormones and steroids to prevent disease and make them fatter. Why is this important? Because one, whatever they are injected with ends up in our food supply and will eventually make us sick. Wild caught salmon or other fish means just what it means. Salmon that is not farm raised and feed stuf that is harmful and eventually ends up harming us. Another reason many vegans have given up on meat products is because corporations have laced our food with too many additives and chemicals that make us sick anyway. I mean, really, most food that seem harmless such as chicken nuggets from fast food restaurants have like 50 damn ingredients in them, and a lot of it comes from chemical preservatives. And does anyone remember the Mad Cow scare? And finally, animals are killed inhumanely in this country. They are taken to slaughterhouses such as these and are kicked, beaten, and their throats slashed. Yeah, the cow scene alone was pretty disgusting. And then it ends up on your plate. Yes, I understand.

Vegans also stay away from products that are tested on animals. Products labeled cruelty free, are not in any way shape or form tested on rats, mice, rabbits. They don’t wear anything made from animals such as leather, furs from chinchilla, rabbit, fox, no gators, snake skin and pretty much every expensive bag from Prada and Gucci. They also don’t use anything that has beeswax, lanolin, emu oil, musk, and carmine in its products. Who wants to see lipstick on a pig anyway? But there are downsides to going vegan. One being that you could end up being deficient in certain vitamins and minerals such as calcium, vitamin D, iron, protein, vitamin B-12, and omega-3 fatty acids. That is why it is recommended by the Vegan Society and the Vegan Outreach to replace these vitamins with supplements are with foods such as seaweed and leafy green vegetables. Their diets mainly consists of tofu, tempeh, seitan, vegetables, legumes, and fruits. Another downfall to going vegan is that people in the community tend to ostracize those that don’t want to eat meat anymore. First we stopped eating pork, then red meat, now no meat? What type of bullsh*t is this? Actually this was talked about over at A Black Girl’s Guide to Weight loss . As I have said before, it would benefit us if we ventured outside the box and tried something unfamiliar to us. As much as we like our food seasoned and flavorful, vegan food does not have to be bland and boring. It does not mean that you are any less black than your peers because you chose to give up the big piece of chicken for, well, chik’n. Don’t worry about what the crabs think; you are the one that lives in you skin and are affected by what you put in your body.

But I have a beef (for) vegans. It’s a peeve of mine when folks want to get in my business about what I’m eating and what I put in my body. I’m being hypocritical some might say because I talk about healthy eating all the time, and yet, I’ll indulge every now and then. Hell, I’m not depriving myself; I tried that and it just doesn’t work for me. I still like meat, I just know my limits and have definitely limited my intake because I want to be healthy for me, and not for some animals that will kill me anyway. In other words, I still live a happy and healthy life and the people who are in the same boat as I am are living just as comfortable. So no, you’re not better than me. Another peeve of mine is when there tends to be a disregard for human life over an animal. I love animals too, hell I’ll even say that I don’t wear fur and wear fake leather(rarely folks)…Guess what? Between a me and a chicken, I’m at the top of the food chain. If I were to swim in the ocean or go on a safari in the African jungle, I’d be somewhere in the middle. If I were to get eaten by a shark or a lion, hey, it is what it is. And it’s a personal choice that people make when it comes to what they put in their bodies. Through food advocacy, you job is to educate the public about going vegan, what the benefits are, and what they can do to protect the environment and help keep our food supply safe. If I wanted to be preached to about why I am an animal killer and how I will rot in hell, I’d find this sexy:

and go hard in the paint that PETA threw on me

The movement is certainly growing and while I would love to join in on the fun and exciting world of all things non-meat, my love/hate relationship permits me not to. at least for right now. Vegans are a growing movement and people who have identified themselves as vegan make up about 1% of the nation. As for the black community, as much as we hear about heart disease, diabetes, and hypertension, going vegan seems like a viable option. What we don’t need to do is to treat one of our own like a freak of nature because they are giving up meat. But the food’s great.